Caloosahatchee Catch Up

Remember the Dukes?  Flattening the hills, straightn'in the curves?


Honest to goodness, I really thought that camelback at Caloosa was a million miles high.  Soooo... maybe it's twelve feet?  And with my head five feet off the ground, plus ripping down through the brush off the side, made it seem higher?  harder?  

Anyway, cameras just seem to take all the scary right out of bike stuff! 

And just to prove it, Cap'n Bligh sent a photo mini tour to share of the Caloosahatchee trail.  Some of it's scary, though you'd never know from the photos, and most of it's not.

But it's all fun.

Caloosahatchee Camelback

Photos give no sense of the OOMPH needed to get yourself up & over these little lumps of landscape.
 

Then, it's a bit of ridgeline and a few miles of just plain whoopy swooping,

until you come to...

The Far East

  

Enter the Dark Side.  Reminds one of Dagoba, it does.

Your training incomplete it is, young Jedi.
 

Especially if you think you can ride this section without putting a foot down like those old Jedi bike warriors, Popeye and Cap'n Bligh!

Photos - bah humbug!  No sense of white knuckled edgy drops or dips quick enough to shoot a rider into the exact same tree as a year ago.  Hey, that scar on my shoulder was fading, I needed to renew it.

 

As I MAY have mentioned, this place gets a tad MUDDY when it rains, so the very smart folks who tend the trails have made some conveniently placed bridges for you to pop up onto and ride over the low spots. 

If you happen to drop your front wheel off, no problem, the back wheel follows pretty well.  On the other hand if your back wheel drops off first... 

Here's a secret. 

If you're really chicken - like nobody's this chicken right?  But if you were, you can get through by riding to the right of the first two bridges and left of the third one.  But only if it's April, when the course is counter-clockwise. 

Of course, if it's May and you're riding clockwise, then stay right, left, left.  

As if anyone would need to do that. 

And if it's muddy?  (Have I mentioned it can get muddy?)  

Oh well.  Ride it or wear it!

 

3 Bridge Trail

Wet or dry there's no ride at Alva without a happy ending.  

You either get a long dippy ridegline and camelbacks, or you get to cruise the sweeping turns of the southern field back to the parking lot.  Um, is it May yet?

Sailor 

One thing's for sure, no matter what the camera does to the dips and the humps of the trail at Caloosahatchee, it just can't flatten the smiles.

             

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Remember our "dignified" first place chain ring plaques?

They have a nicer ring to them now!